TiVo Mini Available Now for $99 and a Subscription, Extends TiVo DVRs

TiVo has officially launched the TiVo Mini, a DVR extender box that lets users of select TiVo DVRs watch their content on other TVs without having to buy another dedicated TiVo recording device for each room in the house.

TiVo is positioning the TiVo Mini as a companion device to regular TiVo boxes, as it can stream both live and recorded TV; utilize services like YouTube, Spotify, Pandora and Hulu Plus (no Netflix just yet, however); set up recordings and more. Basically, it does a lot of what other TiVos do.

But the little black box does come with a few caveats. It’s only compatible with the latest TiVo Premiere 4 and Premiere XL4/Elite DVRs, so owners of earlier TiVos are going to be left out in the cold. It also requires a wired Internet connection, which is something of a rarity in tech these days.

Finally, the $99 price tag TiVo lists for the TiVo Mini is misleading – owning the box will also run users either a monthly subscription fee of $5.99, or a one-time additional fee of $149.99.

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davidgrantaustin
March 12, 2013 at 4:37 pm

Actually, wired Internet / LAN connections in homes are quite common when you consider MoCA, which has been around for over 6 years. This is how all “whole-house” HD DVR technology works for DirecTV, Dish, Verizon and a variety of Cable MSOs Headed and Headless Gateways, Media Servers and IP Clients. While most homes in the US built in the last decade may not have Cat5, Cat5e or Cat6 Ethernet cable pulled throughout the home, RG59 or RG6 (a.k.a. “Coax TV Cable”) has been pulled in over 98% of residential homes and MDUs (apartments) in the built in the last 30+ years. As more and more consumers start to need to move higher and higher bandwidth content throughout their home, which they are already doing today, but may are not be aware that they are, the consumer awareness of MoCA will increase. It will become more common to find consumer products, like the TiVo Premier 4 / 4XL ship with integrated MoCA support. Consumers will soon realize that MoCA has been a “LAN Backbone” for years and will look to “tap” into this high-speed, high reliability, low-latency pipe.

LorenRoetman
March 12, 2013 at 5:37 pm

This looks pretty cool, but until Tivo is standard with a solid state hard drive, I won’t be advising my clients to go Tivo. I have too many dead soldiers in the warehouse.

timo914
March 12, 2013 at 6:34 pm

There is one problem that TIVO will have to address is the new fees the cable companies are putting on the cable cards as of January 1st. You used to have to buy a Tivo device for $99 to $249 and pay the $14.99 per month or a one time fee to keep using it. I have Comcast for cable and my monthly bill went up $55.50 per month, I have 4 Tivo devices that have 6 cable cards in them and Comcast started charging $9.25 per card per month. This added fee is going to stop people from purchasing Tivo’s and have to use the DVR’s from their cable company. The Tivo mini would be a way to not have to add more cable cards to be able to view media on different TV’s. But having to pay a monthly subscription for the mini also or a one time $250 is high. Tivo definitely has to restructure the pricing if they are to keep and lure in new customers.

sswihart
March 15, 2013 at 6:08 pm

I’ve had TiVos since series 1. While I like them and prefer them to DVR boxes I’ve seen from cable companies, I think they’ve lost their way.

The Premiere’s US isn’t really any better than the S3/HD/XL UI in terms of function, and for some reason they don’t allow the S3/HD/XL boxes to do stuff like stream to these new boxes, or utilize the iPad app features, etc.

This alienates people who bought lifetime service or whose box is working just fine, and when those people next upgrade, I believe them to be less likely to go with TiVo.

For the record, I have wired ethernet in most of the house, and TiVos, PS3, AppleTV, Roku and appropriate TVs all used wired.

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